Tesla teases a new wireless home charging station

Tesla has teased what appears to be a new wireless home charging station as part of its charging presentation during its Investor Day.

Investor Day included presentations from all of Tesla’s major divisions, including a presentation about charging by Rebecca Tinucci, head of global charging infrastructure. The bulk of the presentation focused on Tesla’s extensive and already well-documented effort to deploy both DC and AC charging globally.

For the most part, we already knew about what the executive was discussing – though Tesla did share some interesting data points. For example, we already had some indications that Tesla’s Supercharger cost of deployment was much cheaper than the competition, but now the company has put some numbers behind it.

Tinucci ended the presentation with her own “one more thing” moment when she said:

And one more thing. Yes, we got to scale our infrastructure, and yes, we want to power it via renewable sources, but we are Tesla. So we also want to make sure that we are continuing to be focused on proving incredible charging experiences.

That’s the slide she was showing as she said that:

The slide shows the Tesla diner, which is a project that is already underway in California. The company wants to operate its own retro diner at a Supercharger station with movies being projected on giant screens outside.

Now the second image is brand new and appears to show a new wireless home charging station from Tesla:

The pad on the ground underneath the car is what points to a wireless inductive charging system.

Considering the slide also included an image of the Tesla Supercharger diner, which we know is an ongoing project, it could mean that this wireless charging station is also in the works at Tesla.

Several companies have been working on wireless charging for electric vehicles in recent years, but the technology has never taken off.

There are several issues with it. For example, it’s not as efficient as charging with a cable – though the technology has been closing the gap in recent years. It’s also more expensive as you generally have to embed a charging pad securely in the ground instead of just mounting a charger on the wall.

And for these downsides, it doesn’t solve a major problem: having to plug in your car. It’s not a super difficult nor time-consuming task. Nonetheless, Tesla has previously talked about automating the task in order to be ready for self-driving technology. If the cars are driving themselves, it would make sense for them to be able to charge themselves without a human having to plug them in.

However, Tesla appeared to favor an automated robot arm instead of wireless charging to complete this task. Maybe things have changed?